My parents used to send me joint postcards. My father would cut out a sentence of something he liked and he'd stick it down rather badly with tape. My mother would put something in ink. One card I remember fondly had this Edvard Munch quote: "No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love." Then my mother had written: "The chickens are fine and so is your dog, everything in the garden is growing well."

If I were to send you a postcard now, its sentiments would be the same: it's spring and life is no longer about being inside; it's time to live outside, to fall in love with seedlings and new growth, to watch it all unfurl again. In short, it's time to start sowing outside.

You cannot put a date on when to start direct sowing outside. It begins somewhere around now and, depending on your position and soil, may not happen for another month or so. If you are on heavy clay or have poor drainage, it will be later, as wet soil stays colder for longer. Raised beds with good friable organic matter warm up fast.

You can steal some extra heat by warming the beds with plastic sheets or cloches. These will keep off rain and warm the soil below. I use clear plastic because it encourages weeds to grow; a quick hoe before sowing, and I'm a step ahead on that game. Black plastic will warm the soil quicker, but the minute you expose the soil to sun, all the weeds spring up among your seedlings. A soil thermometer is a worthwhile investment. The general rule is that the soil needs to be 8-10C consistently for a week or so to get growth going.

Broad beans (Sutton, Stereo and Aquadulce Claudia); peas for shoots; lettuce ('Emerald oak', 'Grenoble Red', 'Marvel Of Four Seasons'); sorrel, kales, radish, turnips, spring or bunching onions; perpetual and regular spinach (go for fast-growing cultivars such as Galaxy) – all can be sown now. Hardy annual flowers such as sunflowers, poppies, larkspur, godetia, clarkia and nigella can also be sown direct as soon as the soil is sufficiently dry.

Oriental greens such as mizuna will germinate at low temperature. The first very warm days of late spring will make these sowings bolt straight to flower, but you can get several cuttings before this happens.

Cold, wet ground will cause seeds to rot quickly. If it has rained day after day, hold back for a dry spell. There's little point wasting seeds and there's nothing more disheartening then a patchy row.

Alys on...Ranunculus ficaria 'Brazen Hussy'

When I started on my plan to make an edible garden, I got very excited about the lesser celandine, Ranunculus ficaria. I read that it was possible to eat the very young leaves and that the flower buds could be used as a caper substitute. So out I went to experiment. I'll save you the bother: don't. It tastes revolting and there's a reason everything caper-sized shouldn't be seen as a substitute.

However, there is one variety that is allowed in my garden because it plays another vital role. R. ficaria 'Brazen Hussy' offers the bees some early foraging and it does so with such grace (despite its name). Plus, come early summer it all but vanishes back to its bulbous roots.

If it likes you – and it's not hard to please (perhaps that's why Christopher Lloyd named it such) – then it will rapidly makes itself into a carpet. I'm rather pleased by this. I have mine growing along the fence, underneath a large rambling rose, around the rhubarb and generally colonising what bare bits I allow it to. It likes sun in spring and partial shade come summer; by the time I may want the soil back, it has disappeared. It grows naturally in woodlands, so likes rich, heavier soils and doesn't want to dry out over the summer. Give it that and a good water when you plant it, and you will have to do little else.